Top tips on award entry writing
The last few months have seen us not only crafting award entries for clients, but also judging the entries of others as part of the 2021 ukactive Awards.
You’ll be amazed by the difference in calibre of entries which are received by judging panels – here’s our top tips for at least making the shortlist!
Read and understand the award criteria
Awards often have lots of different categories which your brand/organisation/campaign might fit into…but which is really the most relevant to you? Where could you tell the most compelling story and back up your claims with hard, fast results? Award entries take time so choose your categories wisely to increase your chances of success.
Plan ahead
Strong entries take time! Don’t decide to enter and craft your entry a few days before the deadline. If you’re serious about winning, take your time. Start maybe 4-6 weeks before the deadline. Work out information you need, the supporting materials that need collating, who can help you with the entry. And set a deadline by which the first draft needs to be completed to allow for last minute fine tuning.
Prove it (this is the most important advice we can give!)
Award winning entries are those which detail a clear challenge or objective and showcase results. You need to show you achieved what you set out to do. What was the impact on your organisation, on sales, on your key audiences? Back up any claims with hard evidence like key stats or testimonials. Don’t just tell us you did it – we want to know how, in what way, and what it resulted in!
Tell a great story
Take us on your journey but present your information in a digestible way. This is not a novel. Make your key points sing – be succinct and to the point. Inject personality but be authentic and honest. Judges can see through the BS. When there is a limited word count, use your supporting documents to bring your entry more to life visually - videos and real people testimonials always go down well.
Get it checked
Attention to detail matters. Always ask someone to proof your entry with a critical eye not just for typos but areas where you could make it even better. Provide them with the entry criteria so they can analyse if you have answered everything and where you could improve things. If they have questions or don’t understand, then you can guarantee the judges will too. If you’ve planned ahead, you still have time to make final award-winning tweaks.